Friday, May 25, 2012

So....

I just finished a fun commission for a really cool woman, Veronica, who wanted an image of herself and her husband to be as Wonder Woman and Superman as a wedding gift. I thought it might be fun to post the entire series of drawings I did in the development of the final image to show my process:) As always I would love to hear what people think!

Initial thumbnail.

Veronica left it wide open as far as what I could do for this image and this was the first thumbnail I sent her. She loved this pose so I began to refine the drawing.

More refined drawing

In this tighter drawing I began to tweak the anatomy of the figures and spent some time trying to figure out the structure of the male characters forearms which ended up being pretty tough. I also adjusted the legs and feet of the female character to make her look more joyous and happy:)

I also began to suggest clouds and think about this image as a complete composition.

More refined drawing still!

In this version I spent some time refining the hands, expressions and costume details. I also added the date of the wedding to the image. I noticed in the previous version that the male characters head and neck looked a little skinny so I adjusted it somewhat. Still working on those forearms:)

Even more refined drawing:)

Detail, details, details:) Just little things with the expressions, hands and costuming details. His shoulders still didnt look quite right and I thought his upper legs looked kinda bulky. And also her lower foot looks weird, right? The forearms were driving me crazy!! I was literally standing in front of the bathroom mirror holding three pillows to my chest to try and see what this should look like!

Yes.... this is my life:)

Final pencil drawing!

So here was the final pencil version, highly contrasted prior to being printed in duotone for inks. Got the forearms sorted out and the Superman logo on the cape. Slimmed down the legs a bit, by adjusting the slopes of the quads and hams, and got the lower foot straightened out! Put some shadowing on the males back and on the soles of his feet. I tried not to have too much black in this image because of the happy and joyous nature of the image but I like s little spot black just to give the eye visual hooks to move around the imag and to give the process of "looking" at the image a certain tempo. I feel that the eye slows for areas of high contrast and detail so using these elements help dictate the way in which a viewer "reads" an image.

Final image:)

And here are the final colors:)

Realy bright and mostly primaries.

The color story is bluer and slightly darker at the bottom of the image as the two characters lift up into a brighter and oranger sky. The two face, if you look closely are being highlighted by each other to suggest love and happiness:) AWWWWWW!!

The darker clouds below them also help to suggest the visual narrative of the two characters embracing and rising above and danger/unhappiness/rainy days etc.

So this was it! Really fun project and I was happy with the final product as was my amazing client!

If anyone has any questions or comments on what I have done here please feel free to comment or connect with me at ted.helard.com